Glad to see you here. I often check back in to see if you have posted and haven't seen much of anything recently. Notwithstanding, I hope you are well.
Standing my ground was difficult and remains so. Honestly, I still have this mentality that wants to make sure she is happy. But if I look at it objectively, all that does is mkae things worse. I do it because I want her to know that I am a good guy that is STILL willing to work on our family.....but after while, it gets to a point where I think she is just taking because she knows that she can. Honestly, I have given her my time during the holidays and many other times and that hasn't really brought us closer. It has kept the peace and given her what she wants, but she's still in her condo and I am still in the house. This year I realized that what I was doing wasn't moving the ball forward in our relationship.....just leaving my heartsick without my son.
As she was getting upset and saying things like "4 days with my family in IA is not acceptable!" and "he has TWO families"....I was so tempted to say that this was not my choice. Oddly enough (or maybe not so oddly) this whole time there has been no recognition that this is a consequence of the D that she wanted...and our time is dictated by the D decree that she wanted and signed. I have to live with crappy consequences all the time....seems like she tries to shift the burden of it to me when it is her time to suffer. Honestly, I think a lot of this is that she doesn't like being on her own during the holidays. Also not my problem.
It's weird, ya know? Up unti then we were getting along well...we took S trick or treating together....she would talk to me about things going on in her life and vice versa....and then *BOOM* .... she gets angry and blames me.
My new IC has been working with me on some of this stuff and has basically been helping me move forward by encouraging me to stick to my guns and essentially say (peacefully) that I don't like this style of life either and if the day ever comes when you want to discuss living differently, I am open to it. That has been helpful for me.
During the back-and-forth XW said that she would be willing to go with me to my IC "to work through this compromise". I told her that I had made a lot of progress with my IC and did not want to use her for one-off incident resolution. I said it peacefully and told her that if she ever wants to come with me to IC with me or the regular (or even once in awhile) that the invite was there.
Her response was that I was trying to "control" what was discussed in counselling. I.E. "we can't talk about resoliving this incident, but we CAN to about recon" -- which was by no means my intent. She called me doing that "unhealthy".
I don't know...I guess I am venting a bit here since I haven't done it in a bit. She has been barely communicative in recent days and if so, it is with regard to her travel plans for the most part. What's messed up is that I still feel that making her angry is me pushing her away from me. I know that is not healthy, and I am not giving in to it - but it is hard to shake that frame of mind at times.
